Whilst we’ve all been a little distracted by politics over the past 12 months, one thing that does seem to be on everyone’s lips is water. Thanks in no small part to the long, hot summer we all experienced in 2018, this topic has certainly come into sharp focus.

In a recent BBC article, it is claimed that water bills are too expensive, and many families are struggling to pay them. One lady even goes on to say that she sometimes has to miss out on flushing the toilet or washing, as her rates have risen by 35%.

Whilst money is a real concern for many families across the UK, there are some simple ways you can conserve water and save on bills.

Tip 1

Make sure your toilet is WRAS approved. The Water Regulations Advisory Scheme encourages the efficient use of water and provide approval for many bathroom products. They suggest that toilets come with a dual flush, with the larger of the two being no more than 6 litres in capacity. If your toilet isn’t WRAS approved, you could potentially be wasting up to 60 litres per day.

Tip 2

Showering has been steadily gaining popularity since the latter half of the 20th century, not least because it allows us to have a quicker, all-over wash which fits in with our increasingly hectic lifestyles. However, one major advantage it has over bathing is that it uses, on average, 40% less water.Continue Reading

Your home is your sanctuary. It might be where your family gathers at the weekends, where you come to relax after a long day at work or where you keep your more cherished possessions. Whatever your home means to you, it makes sense that you want to protect it in any way that you can. With this in mind, here are five tips to help you secure your home.

Safeguard against burglary and crime

Protecting your home from the outside can prevent theft, so try to look at your property through the eyes of a burglar. Are there weaknesses that need securing, such as expensive items on display, either outside or through your windows? Tall trees outside multi-story homes can also facilitate entry for thieves, so keep them trimmed and shut your windows at night. Motor sensor lighting and security cameras can also deter criminals, especially if your neighborhood is poorly lit.Continue Reading

When it comes to finding a destination for investment, you’ve got several options. You can go for the more general route, and opt for businesses with broad client bases – such as the professional services “Big Four”, including Deloitte or KPMG. However, while it may make sense to invest in a firm that has clearly had success in attracting a wide client base, it’s not the only option available.

Choosing to invest in niche industries has its upsides. Niche markets essentially contain highly specialized services – and that means there’s a product there for which people are willing to pay a premium. When a company specializes, meanwhile, they often find their pool of competitors reducing as their own skill sets become more unique – which is an advantage for their bottom line. This article will look at some examples of profitable niches and consider why they are so successful.

Logistics

A field such as logistics may seem at first glance to be a pretty unspecialized and broad-natured sector. However, with an increasingly globalized economy now emerging, the haulage and infrastructure requirements of individual firms are diverse. A firm might need to send their raw materials from one place to another by boat, for example, but then need to fly their end products across the world to reach new markets.Continue Reading

In any arena where large sums of money change hands at speed, you can guarantee that there will be scammers. Exactly how much money is lost to forex traders in this way is difficult to establish because many people are too embarrassed by how they’ve been swindled to want to talk about it – and that makes it all the easier for the scammers to get away with it. How can you stay safe? What do you need to know about scams and the people who run them? How can you find a safe way to trade, and what should you do if, despite all your precautions, you find yourself a victim?

Basic safety tips

A lot of what you need to do to stay safe comes down to common sense. Scammers look for people who are naive, careless, greedy or desperate. Keeping cool and thinking first should keep you out of trouble. Familiarise yourself with the risks at ForexFraud.com and be wary of the following:

Promises of really high success rates. Nothing is that certain in forex trading.

Pressure to agree right away. This is a classic scammer tactic.

Pressure to supply personal information. This can be used for identity theft and it’s very rarely needed by genuine dealers.

Green motoring has become a much more viable option in recent years, for a variety of reasons – although some still debate their value to both the consumer and the car market as a whole. What’s often overlooked, however, is the idea of leasing these cars – Go Green Leasing explains why this may be the missing factor for a lot of businesses:

Fuel Costs and Consumption

Whether you’re leasing vehicles for a business or for personal use, the biggest overarching cost is the price of the petrol (or, occasionally, diesel) needed to fuel them. This has become such a major factor that the car industry is starting to value the ‘fuel economy’ of a brand or model over its speed and acceleration.

Electricity isn’t free (unless you generate it yourself), but the cost of electrical power is often far less expensive unless you’re getting it from a very specialised private power company. A refuel that would normally cost £50 could be as cheap as £10, if not less, allowing you to get at least five complete refuels on the same budget. The rate of fuel consumption may be higher than with conventional vehicles, but the cost can easily counterbalance this.Continue Reading

Whether you’re managing personal finances or the budget of an entire company, water bills will often be a big part of your expenses. Reducing them can seem difficult at first since water is such a vital part of everyday life, but there are several ways that you can keep those rates low without needing to sacrifice much in return. We’ve teamed up with Total Water Solutions to create this quick list of ways to reduce your water rates.

Add a water meter

It’s fairly common knowledge that a water meter can heavily reduce your water expenses, since it removes your rateable value charges: these charges are based on the annual rental value of the property, meaning that you’d pay a large sum on any home built prior to 1990 that had water.Continue Reading

When you’re setting up a new start-up, there are a million things to consider and put together. You don’t realize how many things you need to sort out until you’re faced with this problem. Where do you get office space, and how much do you need? How difficult is it to get funding, and who is going to help you get it? Are there any business tools that will make the process easier and ensure the business is running smoothly from the start? Here are our top tips for new business start-ups and how you can set them up properly from the beginning.

1. Renting Office Space

When you’re big enough to get out of your one-bedroom apartment and ready to have a dedicated office for your business, you know you’re on your way to making it. However, finding a suitable office space isn’t as cut-and-dry as you would think. You need to figure out how much space you need, where your ideal location is, how much it’s going to cost, where to start looking, etc. The easiest way to rent office space is to use the services of a company, because that takes the guesswork out of it and leaves the hard work to the professionals.Continue Reading